5 Steps for Crafting Effective Local Marketing Campaigns

Think about the top small businesses in your area. What’s the common thread that they all share? While appealing branding or unique offerings are often critical to success, the most successful businesses tend to be deeply connected with their local communities.

For example, perhaps the top dog grooming business in your area consistently offers community grooming workshops, sponsors local events, and references its location in marketing messages.

Building this connection hinges on having an effective local marketing strategy. To attract new customers, keep existing ones engaged, and cement your business as a trusted community institution, you’ll need a strategic, technology-backed approach.

Let’s explore five steps to help you understand your audience, leverage technology and data effectively, and bring in reliable, long-term business through local marketing.

Tips for Executing Your Next Local Marketing Campaign

1. Know your ideal customer.

It can be tempting to cast a wide net with your marketing, but this strategy only makes your message feel generic. Instead of wasting your resources on unanswered appeals, you’ll need to take a data-driven approach.

According to Deep Sync, data-driven marketing results in better targeting, enhanced customer experiences, increased brand loyalty, stronger decision-making, and a higher return on investment.

The goal with this approach is to pinpoint your ideal customer and analyze key traits that will help you engage this audience, such as:

• Generation: Knowing what age range your target audience falls in will help you determine what tone to use (e.g., formal vs. casual) and key communication platforms. For instance, while Gen Zers tend to be avid TikTok users who appreciate casual and humorous marketing, older demographics may prefer more polished messages on platforms like Facebook.
• Income level: Estimate both your target audience’s income level and their discretionary spending habits (money spent on non-essentials). Use this to guide both your pricing strategy and whether to emphasize luxury or features versus value and affordability in your marketing.
• Buying motivations: Identify your ideal customer’s primary reason, or “why,” for purchasing your goods or services. Then, tailor your messaging depending on whether your customers prioritize convenience, exclusive access, budget-friendly options, or other factors when shopping.
• Interests: Uncover any hidden or related interests. For example, cat cafe customers might also volunteer at a local shelter. This can reveal potential local marketing partners your audience is already familiar with.

If you own a local yarn shop, for example, your ideal customer would be a fiber artist who also lives near your shop, values premium fibers, and has the disposable income to spend on high-quality materials.

Consider where they might spend time outside of their fiber arts hobby (for instance, at a local farmer’s market, bookstore, or library crafting group) and explore ways to market via these channels.

2. Optimize for local search.

Even the most localized business relies on a strong digital foundation. When potential customers search for a specific service or event in their area, your business should be the first result they see.

Local search engine optimization (SEO) will help you target these users. As Gingr’s marketing guide explains, local SEO is the process of optimizing your website to appear in search engine results for customers in your locale.

1. Your business registers with Google, sets up a Google Business Profile (GBP), and creates content optimized with location-specific keywords.
2. A potential customer acknowledges their problem or need for your offerings.
3. They search a relevant query (e.g., “accountant near me”) and browse the top results.
4. They spot your business in the featured snippet near the top of the results page, above other organic search results.
5. The potential customer reviews your hours, reviews, and services before making a final decision.

The most important first step you’ll need to take is to create and optimize your GBP. Ensure that your name, address, and phone number (NAP) are consistent across your GBP, website, and social media accounts to foster trust with customers. Additionally, encourage customers to leave reviews to signal that your business is active and relevant in the local area.

3. Get involved in your community.

Local marketing thrives on strategies that are unique to your area and position your business as a valuable fixture in the community. Focus on implementing and promoting creative initiatives like:

• Creating a mutually beneficial partnership with another non-competing local business that serves the same target audience (e.g., a local dog kennel partnering with a dog park to offer cross-promotional discounts to each customer group).
• Attending or sponsoring established events such as market days, parades, high school sporting events, etc.
• Hosting community events that educate the community about your product, service, or general area of expertise.
• Giving back to the community by organizing initiatives like community clean-up days or supporting local nonprofits through sponsorships and other corporate giving programs.
• Highlighting other local groups or individuals to your customers to show your support—for example, you might dedicate a corner of your shop to local artisans and make a monthly “local vendor spotlight” post.

Partnering with other local businesses and organizations exposes you to a new pool of high-quality local leads who already trust your partner. Giving back, whether to nonprofits, schools, libraries, or other community-focused organizations, also builds community goodwill and ensures you’re top-of-mind when a need arises.

4. Provide consistent, personalized communications.

Personalized, one-of-a-kind service is one of the primary differentiators for small businesses, and this should be carried over into your marketing efforts. However, manually sending follow-ups, reminders, and promotions is time-consuming. This is why leveraging technology for marketing automation is so important.

Here are some ideas for incorporating automation into your marketing:

• Use email marketing automation to set up a welcome sequence for every new customer. This could include a warm welcome message, a brief introduction to your services, and a targeted first-purchase promotion.
• Leverage SMS text messaging to send timely, relevant reminders about upcoming appointments, local events, promotions, or collaborations with other organizations.
• Experiment with automated geofencing follow-ups to detect when an opted-in customer is near your business but hasn't entered recently, triggering a personalized "We miss you!" text or email.
• Send an automatic reward sequence for special events or milestones, such as automated birthday eCards that include a coupon or a promotion tied to a relevant local event.

By leveraging automation, you can manage hundreds of client communications without having to lift a finger, freeing up your team to focus on more strategic tasks. This allows you to offer the necessary personalization on a large scale, boosting customer engagement and retention.

5. Track campaign performance.

Finally, you’ll need to determine what is working and what could be improved in the future. While you don’t necessarily need to be a data analysis wizard, you will need to track some key performance indicators (KPIs) and customer feedback. Here are some effective ways to gather this data:

• Use channel-specific promo codes. Create unique discount codes for each communication channel you use (e.g., "PARK20" for flyers at the dog park vs. "INSTA20" for social media).
• Monitor web traffic. Use tools like Google Analytics to view your web traffic sources—in other words, are your Google Business Profile, a partner’s website, or social media links bringing the most visitors to your site?
• Track conversions. Avoid focusing on “vanity metrics” (follower counts, views, etc.) that don’t translate to tangible value. Instead, measure how many of your leads actually converted by booking a service or buying a product.
• Ask the "Golden Question.” Have your staff ask new customers, "How did you hear about us?" and record the answer.

Additionally, consider asking customers for qualitative insights by sharing a quick survey via email. This not only gives you valuable insights but also stewards your relationship with customers by showing that you value their opinions.

To market to local customers, you’ll need accurate data, precise targeting, and an understanding of what it takes to make an impact in your community. As you build your marketing strategy, identify creative, diverse ways to get involved and offer unique, tangible value to the community members that have the potential to be your next customer.